


costellazione

by bloodrunsred



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Backstory, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Original Character(s), POV Original Character, Self-Doubt, Self-Esteem Issues, no morty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:48:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 22,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22238893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodrunsred/pseuds/bloodrunsred
Summary: Redemption comes to the galaxy in the shape of a girl, cradling a dying Rick in her arms--or Rick gives the middle finger to fate, the universe shifts two feet to the left, and a girl becomes a legend.*Alternatively, Krombopulos Michael, Saheli, and Birdperson try to save the world. Things go as well as can be expected.
Relationships: Diane/Rick Sanchez (Rick and Morty: The Rickshank Rickdemption), Rick Sanchez & Beth Smith (Rick and Morty), Rick Sanchez/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 12





	1. the stars in the shape of your smile

**Author's Note:**

> FIRST OF ALL: the blurb and plot of this captivating story can only be credited to lovely @alchemisticarus on tumblr, without whom this novelette would never have been made!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOT MY OC: credit belongs to the lovely [@alchemisticarus](https://alchemisticarus.tumblr.com/) on tumblr!
> 
> ART BY KAIKAMIYU ON INSTAGRAM!!!

Rick’s garage would probably always be one of Saheli’s favourite places.

As far as garages typically went, it was above and beyond anything she had previously expected, or thought possible. There were vials full of luminescent liquid, guns, knives, stupidly large magnets that, as far as she knew, had no purpose, and boxes galore that were just filled to the brim with _stuff._

And it wasn’t the kind of stuff that she would find in a seventh grade science classroom either; no, Rick would never let his gizmos be as boring and predictable as a few bunsen burners and cow hearts… instead he forced his personality into the garage that was almost too small to hold it all. 

Saheli loved science. And Rick was everything that she had grown up admiring, even though she was far from a scientist--she was just an avid observer. Her favourite thing in the world was when Rick would tug her by the wrist into the garage, joking and smiling and tossing her a hairband to tie her curly hair back against the nape of her neck and out of the reach of sparks and green fire. She was involved, but she didn’t have to play up her intelligence in a way that would inevitably fall apart as soon as Rick probed further.

Oh well: she could have the heart and he could have the brain, and Beth and Diane would both make up the structure of their body, the limbs and lungs and everything that made them work the way they should (and the knowledge that sickness and disease could take root in those things was something profound and terrifying in its own right, and something she refused to think about around Beth).

Speaking of the princess of terror herself...

Rick had a special affinity when it came to making toys for children, in the same way that sharks were particularly good at walking.

“Ha!” Beth grinned a large, toothy grin, showing off the gap in between her two front teeth. Saheli stepped to the side expertly to avoid the swing of Beth’s favourite switchblade, and raised an eyebrow as she edged out of her lackluster hiding space (behind the shelf, obviously), trusting Beth not to try and stab her again. To her credit, Beth just pouted. “Hey! Daddy said that I was allowed to stab you!”

Beth was a lovely child, she really was. At just four years old (and, God, she was unnecessarily advanced for her age), she had known Saheli since she was born, and had had her as a babysitter since she was four; which meant she was not shy at all when it came to demonstrating her more sadistic tendencies. And her ability to ever-so-slightly stretch the truth “Your daddy didn’t say that, Bethy-Bear, I know he didn’t,” then, leaning down conspiratorially in a way that made her dark brown curls spill over her shoulders, she whispered: “And, now, if I had to go to the E.R, how could I make you pancakes for dessert?”

Beth clapped her hands together gleefully, switchblade forgotten for the moment--though Saheli knew that she would be back to terrorising the neighbourhood soon--as she skipped back into the house, beckoning for Saheli to follow her. “Come onnnnn,” she groaned as she wriggled impatiently where she was standing, energetic in a way that only a child could be. “We have to watch Star Wars, and you have to tell me a story!”

Saheli cast one last longing look at the contents of the garage, before disappearing into the kitchen with Beth.

Rick would be home soon. He had settled into a semi-routine recently, and a glance at the clock on the wall let Saheli know that they only had a couple of hours left.

At least her Bethy-Bear was still as bubbly and cheerful as she had always been: Saheli could always count on the tiny blonde to be unmoved by tragedy and human emotion, and while it unsettled her more often than not, she had to say it was probably a useful trait she had picked up from her father (even if it was hard to understand).

Through Rick’s new hot-and-cold flashes and his more consistent lapses in judgement, Beth was probably the one thing they could see cold blue eye-to-warm hazel eye on recently.

Realistically, they didn’t make sense. Saheli didn’t think she was ever supposed to meet the Sanchez family, and even if she was--she knew for a fact that she wasn’t supposed to be as close to them as she was. Certainly not close enough that she was a permanent feature in the garage she was so entranced by, and the regular babysitter for their four (turning five, to be fair) year old budding sociopath (which she meant in the kindest way possible because Beth really was a little angel).

Settling down into the couch with Beth to watch one of her favourite things-- _Star Wars_ , of course, which was second only to _Happy Tree Friends,_ a show that sounded cute until Saheli was forced to sit through the first episode; after that, there had been no doubt in her mind when it came to stopping her from watching it while she was under Saheli’s supervision. If not for the fact that she was closer to Rick than she was to Diane, she would have dropped a comment on what shows they let her favourite child watch. As it was, her reluctance to cause a fight between the two stopped her from blabbing.

Back when she had first met Rick, she could never have imagined that life would have had them be anything more than passing acquaintances, or neighbours. But, for some inexplicable reason, Rick--and his then pregnant wife--let her, at only fifteen years old, into their lives.

* * *

_Saheli wasn’t stupid enough to call herself disadvantaged._

_She and her family had been given opportunities that others didn’t get, and they were well-off in almost every sense of the word. They lived in a middle class neighbourhood, Saheli went to a good school, and her parents both had good jobs that they liked at least a little bit._

_But there was still something that didn’t settle well in her stomach._

_It wasn’t anything insidious or threatening, but it was still a feeling that she couldn’t escape no matter what she did; and it only festered the longer she took to figure out what was causing it. It was worsened when Tommy Mackie made fun of her for being interested in space, and she could have winced at the way her guts coiled when her science teacher made flippant comments about her looks._

_It wasn’t like Saheli wasn’t used to people talking about her looks, okay?_

_Mainly because she was one of the only non-white students at the school, which meant she got a lot of compliments--or sweetly said insults--about how exotic she was, and how lovely her long, dark hair was._

_About how she could trick any man into letting her into his life. Fun stuff like that._

_But it was true._

_Saheli--for as long as she could even remember--loved science. She loved to look at things and try and figure out how they worked, and marvel at every new scientific discovery made, and talk about the future. Saheli was, also, not good at science. She was bright, but she just wasn’t… built that way. It was okay, though! She really could be worse off, but it was just the fact that people like her science teacher--Mr Smitty, a balding man who, when she asked to stay after class and discuss the homework, liked to say ‘You’re lucky you’re a beautiful girl, Miss Rossi’--only paid her attention because she wasn’t ugly._

_It would have been easier to ignore if she wasn’t average at her interests, but the truth was simple: people didn’t let her stick around them because she was good at things, they did it because she was cute. Or pretty. Or exotic, or any other thing along those lines._

_And it sounded like a brag, but Saheli would have honestly given anything in order to have it switched. She would have been more than happy to be intelligent without having--without having useless stuff clear skin, or straight teeth, and long eyelashes._

_Of course, not everyone was a fan of the way she or her mom looked._

_Some people on their street were of the older generation, and had less respect for her family based on a few things in particular: Saheli and her mom’s skin colour and proud Indian heritage, their reluctance to follow the crowd when it came to things like appearance, and probably the fact that her dad, a reasonably well off and respectable Italian man, had even married her mom at all._

_Saheli had heard all iterations of undeserving throughout her childhood, and most of them were directed at her mother and her to some extent._

_It was better than other places, and her father was an imposing enough figure that any talk that might have been directed to their faces was all behind their backs instead. It was bad, but still; from what her mom had told her of her own childhood in a lower class area, she knew for a fact that she had it easy in comparison._

_Their neighbourhood was dominated by people with pale skin and snooty disposition, which was why the Sanchez family was a breath of fresh air._

_Though her first impression of Diane was that she was pale and petite, and that there was something that was just… sophisticated about her. Saheli could still remember the tiny parasol she had balanced over her shoulder to shield her from the sun, and how her sundress was the prettiest thing she had ever seen. She seemed fun and elegant simultaneously, which Saheli had known would make her the source of envy for most of the ladies on their street. Her small hand had cradled a subtle baby bump, and Rick had ducked to press a kiss to her lips as he crawled out of the car._

_And Rick had certainly been a character as well._

_The first thing she noticed was his shock of blue hair. And, really, that was her first sense of the fact that these people--her new neighbours--would be really, really different._

_The second tell had been his skin colour--he wasn’t dark, but he was clearly tanner than his wife--and the distinctly latin music that blasted from his car. And his car, for all of her interest in technology and cars and science, was so unique that she couldn’t tear her eyes away from it._

_It was blue, like his hair (and, months later, she realised that it was suspiciously similar to the colour of Diane’s eyes, and her heart melted just the tiniest bit in her chest), and had three lights on the front instead of the normal two, and dark windows--it was short and sleek, too (though there was a certain amount of damage to it), and her fingers itched at the idea of playing around with its engine--probably ruining it in the process, but that was part of the fun when it came to taking things apart._

_It ran smoothly, despite the fact that there was obvious signs of age in its windows and paint job, and she was as curious as a cat to see if what its engine was made out of that made it run so well._

_And he was a scientist. He was wearing a large, white coat that she had always dreamed of wrapping around herself, his hands shoved flippantly in his pockets as he looked around lazily, the wind ruffling his hair--and, even when she rubbed her eyes, it was still that shade of blue--as his wife clapped her hands excitedly next to him. It was so hard not to stare and see what else she could figure out about them, and see if they were just as interesting beneath the surface._

_It was her problem with staring that led to their first official interaction._

_“Oi, kiddo!” Rick had yelled across the street, causing perfectly coiffed heads to poke out of windows, and a few gardeners to give him a brief, unfriendly glance. Saheli nearly toppled off the porch, however, when he turned his piercing eyes on her. “Instead of staring, wanna give us a hand?”_

_Diane--though, at the time, Saheli had been embarrassingly referring to her as Cher, because of her slight physical similarities with Alicia Silverstone in her recent movie--had rolled her eyes fondly, and crossed her arms over her chest. “Ignore him,” she called out, pushing him away by the chest as he chuckled down at her, but Saheli was already on her feet._

_She wasn’t rude after all; she had been raised better than that, and she didn’t want to leave a pregnant woman to do work that she, as a person that regularly carried around heavy equipment when her father decided he wanted her to help him with his work around the house._

_He had looked fairly conflicted at that: amused, scathing, and pleased all at once. He almost looked soft in a way that shouldn’t have suited his face and its sharp lines, but absolutely did, when he looked at his wife’s swollen tummy._

_“Wow,” he said when she crossed the road, tying her thick hair back with a dark blue scrunchie. “You’re going to get kidnapped for sure one day, kiddo. What if I were--what if we were absolute psychos?”_

_She shrugged. “My dad is watching from the window in our house,” Saheli jabbed her thumb behind her, where she knew her dad would be peering through the glass, looking imposing and impossibly large, as he always did. “He would be more likely to kill me if he thought that I was being rude to our new neighbours.”_

_What she didn’t say was that she didn’t think his wife would hurt a kid just judging by the way she cradled her stomach, and she didn’t think he would because of the way he looked at her stomach. She had the feeling, deep in the pit of her stomach, that he wouldn’t appreciate hearing that. He seemed like a real tough guy. Still, her new neighbour craned his neck to see if her dad was watching like she knew he was (thought it seemed like he was mostly just trying to tease her). She didn’t say anything though, just smiling pleasantly while the beautiful woman standing next to him rolled her eyes so hard Saheli thought they were going to roll into the back of her head._

_“You’re serious about helping then, kiddo?” he turned back to her eventually, and extended his hand. “What’s with you little girls, always jumping to help people out? Be a dick, you don’t--you don’t have to have one. Follow your heart and become a--a tiny serial killer, you know?_

_...Was he drunk?_

_Saheli’s dad wasn’t a large drinker: if he cooked, he cooked with wine, but he tended to just sit down in the evening and have a glass or two before going to bed, so Saheli really couldn’t say that she was exposed to drunk people a lot. Mrs. Number Three next door was most definitely an alcoholic, but she kept that indoors--and good for her for not exposing her habits to Mrs. Number Thirteen across the street. She was a raging bitch._

_Saheli held her tongue, and gave him a small smile because she wasn’t exactly interested in being rude or causing a scene._

_“...Yes, sir?” Saheli held out her own, shaking his hand firmly, the question in her brain unvoiced but heard nonetheless. He stuck out his tongue (that was pierced!), fake gagging at the title she had given him, and she smiled a little more genuinely._

_“Call me Rick. If I ever hear you calling me sir again, I’m going to cut your tongue out,” he--Rick--said, causing Saheli to blink in delayed surprise at his decidedly not very nice words in front of two ladies--one of them being a teenager he didn’t know, the other being his pregnant wife no less-- before waving his arm to his wife. “And this is my hot-ass wife, Diane.”_

_Diane rolled her eyes at the introduction, and saluted._

_They were… different alright, but Saheli loved them already._

* * *

Rick found the two of them hours later, curled up on the couch with mussed hair and blankets surrounding them. In the middle of the chaos, however, and the crumpled chip packets, Beth was sleeping soundly for the first time in ages. He obviously didn’t mean to show it, but Saheli didn’t miss the half-smile that tugged at his lips when he saw them, and she didn’t call attention to it. Rick valued his emotions and they belonged in a special place: that place just didn’t happen to be on his face most of the time.

Still, she couldn’t help but tilt her head towards the camera that rested on its place in a cabinet next to the T.V, still slightly out of Beth’s reach in case she decided it needed surgery like she had with a few other expensive items in the house.

Rick rolled his eyes, but still obliged; his long, thin fingers wrapped around the camera, and he barely even looked through it before he snapped a picture, and then set it aside carelessly. Saheli would never admit to pouting at his attitude in a million years, and only shifted slightly to make room for him to sit down.

“Hey, Pluto,” Rick said, letting his head loll to rest on his hand which was propped up by the arm of the couch. “Did she behave for you?”

Saheli normally would have told him that Beth tried to kill her again, and Rick would normally laugh, but she just had to know something first. “How is she?” Saheli asked, softly so she didn’t disturb Beth. “Is she doing any better?”

Diane was… a difficult topic at the moment.

“The stupid bitch--she won’t even let me make her a cure,” Rick snarled under his breath, barely aware of the sleeping girl that was resting between him and Saheli. “She--she’s still mad at me, I think, and I can’t--I don’t want--”

Rick wasn’t normally so open but, then again, he wasn’t normally so drunk either. She had realised that he was an alcoholic within three seconds of meeting him, but when Diane got sick he reached new lows with every game of puff puff pass and the kinds of drinks he liked to consume. It was one of the many things that were better left unmentioned, and had been until Diane had decided enough was enough.

She had ripped into Rick a few months ago and things hadn’t been the same between them ever since.

* * *

_“You can’t fucking keep doing this, Rick!” Diane was crying, her cheeks red and blotchy, eyes swollen from the tears that were pooling in her eyes despite the fact that the tear tracks on her cheeks weren’t even dry yet. “You leave and you don’t care that I have to look after Beth and the house and everything by myself! And then you come home and talk about your fucking friends, and space, and everything that Beth loves and I’m always the bad guy!”_

_Rick was hunched, his mouth twisted into an ugly scowl even though Saheli could see, through the crack in the kitchen door, that his eyes were large and vulnerable in the way they always were whenever he came back from whatever it was he did in space._

_“And those inventions… Beth nearly hurt herself today trying to get you to--to get you to come home to us, and you don’t even care, do you?”_

_It really wasn’t Saheli’s business, but she had only been two steps behind Diane when they heard the gentle whoosh of the portal opening in the garage, and she had just wanted to see how he was. Whether or not he was okay, because talking Beth away from the half-formed bomb that lay messy on the workbench had been one of the scariest moments of her life, and she was just nineteen. She shouldn’t have all that many scary experiences, and she shouldn’t know deep in her gut that the rest of the trauma she would ever experience would happen while she was on the Sanchez payroll too._

_“Jesus, Diane,” Rick breathed. “Of course I fucking care, that’s our daughter! But what I do is important too, you have to fucking know that.”_

_Diane threw her hands in the air, but Saheli was distracted by a small gasp behind her. She whirled around, catching a glimpse of Beth dropping her school bag by the door, her mouth a perfect ‘o’ as she creeps forward, excitement lighting up her little features like a carnival._

_Saheli shushed her, pressing her index finger to her lips before standing from her crouched position, offering her hand to Beth to lead her into the living room._

_“Mommy was supposed to pick me up,” Beth said matter-of-factly. “But she was late and I was bored, so I ran away from the teacher who was watching me. But-” here, her face turned from nonchalant to hopeful. “-Is daddy home? Is that why mommy forgot to pick me up?”_

_Saheli let her head fall into her hands, and sighed deeply. Beth was smart, but she was still just a little girl and she shouldn’t have had to walk home from pre-school by herself. “Bethy-Bear--he is--but you can’t walk home by yourself, okay? I know you’re growing up, but you still have to wait for your mommy or me, or get the school to call home in case we get side-tracked. So we know where you are and that you’re safe.”_

_Beth rolled her eyes. “The school is just around the corner! I’m fine, but--can I see daddy?”_

_Right on cue, there was a loud yell that came from the garage, drawing Beth’s attention away from where Saheli was shaking her head. “Your parents are just having a little talk,” she said, wincing away when Rick screamed something incoherent. “So I’m just going to--to let them know you’re home and then I’ll let you play make-up on me.”_

_Saheli didn’t use make-up a whole lot, but Beth was obsessed with smearing it all over her face if given the chance, which she didn’t get given often. Beth hesitated, eyes darting to where the garage door would be if it wasn’t hidden by a wall. “...Okay, but you have to tell daddy that I expect a bedtime story,” she commanded, tripping over the word expect just a little as her lisp played up (caused by losing her two front teeth--she ran into a wall while playing chase). “And cookies because he was gone for so long.”_

_“‘Atta girl,” Saheli said, ruffling her hair gently even though Beth squawked and batted her hands away. “Now go wait upstairs for me.”_

_Beth hurried to do just that, hopping on one foot to peel the velcro ties on her shoe, and kicking it off before switching to the other foot and doing the same thing. “Hurry up, Sah-Sah!” she called from the top of the stairs, before Saheli heard the patter of feet running to the guest bedroom, where Saheli kept a few things in case she needed to stay over and watch Beth._

_Saheli didn’t say anything as she crept back into the kitchen, where the shouting match had continued undeterred by the fact that their four-year-old that had just gotten home. She pressed her face against the wall, peering through the crack where the slightly ajar door would have met the wall if it was closed._

_“-And your drinking, Rick!” Diane cried, her fingers bunched in her normally straight, shiny hair, tangling it into knots. “You drink and you drink because, guess what? It’s because you know you’re not ready to explore the universe, you’re not ready to be a husband, and you’re not ready to be a father.”_

_A cold silence settled over the room, sending a shiver running down Saheli’s spine as she eased the door open slightly. It probably wasn’t the brightest idea considering the tension, but it was her job as an adult to make sure that Beth didn’t run down and get upset because her parents were fighting; in particular, Rick. Beth adored Rick, and even though Saheli understood--Rick was everything she could have ever wanted to be--she was too little to understand that he had flaws because he wasn’t really around for her to see them. Diane was the stricter of the two, which was always a cause of tension between her and Beth even if Beth was little: she knew what she wanted, and didn’t like the fact that Rick let her have what she wanted, while Diane didn’t._

_“Then I guess I won’t come back next time, will I?” Rick’s voice was so quiet and serious that Saheli stopped midstep, frozen in her spot, and she knew from Diane’s choked gasp that she felt the same way._

_Rick couldn’t leave them… could he?_

_He wouldn’t. Saheli had known him for years, and she knew that the insults and the petty comments weren’t meant to be taken to heart, and she knew that he had to care for them just a little. Sociopathic tendencies aside, he made an effort--most of the time--to love the people he was close with._

_Saheli just hadn’t seen him look so serious before…_

_“You--you-” Diane was trembling and, even though Saheli could only see the side of her face, she could see how her fist was clenching and unclenching by her side, and see how she was trembling like she was ready to explode._

_She didn’t see Diane’s face before it happened: she only had her imagination when it came to whether or not her eyes rolled into the back of her head, whether her pretty face contorted from the pain when she collapsed like a puppet with her strings pulled taut and then cut._

_“Diane!”_

_She and Rick spoke in unison, their voices blending into one, horror-filled word as they lunged to try and catch her. Rick, to his credit, wasn’t thrown off by her appearance (and she wouldn’t be surprised if he knew she was there the whole time, and had just been ignoring her), and he caught her first, his portal gun in his hand quicker than Saheli could register. “Holy fuck,” Rick said, using the back of his hand to brush Diane’s hair out of her face, smearing the blood that had started leaking from her nose across her face as he did so. He turned to Saheli, who was kneeling beside them, and said: “You need to--to look after Beth, I just need to take Diane to-” he trailed off into mumbling, shooting a portal under his feet and vanishing even when Saheli tried to reach for him._

_“Oh my God,” Saheli said, her hands shaking when she pressed them into her cheeks. “Oh my God.”_

_“Saheli!” Beth called out, her little voice muddled by the ringing in Saheli’s ears. “Are you coming?”_

_She needed to stay calm and make sure Beth stayed calm too--Rick would have taken her if he needed her, and she couldn’t try and drag Beth to every local hospital on the off-chance Rick even took her to a place on earth. She just needed to take deep breaths. Rick was a genius, after all; if anyone could figure out what had happened with Diane, he would be able to, and he’d probably make fun of half-a-dozen people as he did so._

_“Yeah!” Saheli yelled, patting her hair down as she stood slowly from where she had been kneeling on the cold, hard cement floor. “Be there in a second!”_

_What if Diane was dying?! What happened?! Saheli saw her nearly every day, how did she not see this coming?!_

_She had to stay calm, but that was easier said than done._

_Walking up the stairs was a pain that she hadn’t expected. Her feet felt like lead, and her head felt empty and slow, like she had just been in a car crash and hadn’t quite registered it. Diane wouldn’t… she wouldn’t die. Rick wouldn’t let that happen._

_“Are you ready to play make-up?” Beth asked, already holding one of Saheli’s brushes in her h_ _and, flicking it like it was a magic wand. “And did you tell daddy?”_

_Sitting down in front of the mirror, Saheli noticed how clammy she looked; her brown skin looked almost washed, and she could see the darker freckles that dotted her face, dusting over her nose and cheeks more clearly than she normally saw them._

_“Yeah,” she said, more evenly than she thought she would be able to pull off. “I did.”_

_Beth beamed, and swiped thick lines of blush across her cheeks, obscuring the pattern of freckles that Rick said reminded him of a constellation near Pluto which was how her nickname was born in the first place._

_Saheli wouldn’t dare cry and ruin Beth’s hard work._

* * *

“She’ll be fine, Rick,” Saheli said, and she really, really wished that she meant it. Those words had been real months ago, but time and grief grew on them like mold, eating away at sincerity and hope like it was its only mission on earth. “She’s strong.”

Rick didn’t disagree, but he aged a million years as she said that and she wished--not for the first time--wondered what life would have been like if she wasn’t apart of it. She had heard him mumble about alternate universes, about the _multiverse,_ and even though he was tightlipped about it, she had watched enough sci-fi shows and listened to him enough that she had a basic idea. Somewhere outside of human reach (except for Rick, of course), there was a place where she was different. Where she made Rick different, or she didn’t exist at all.

It was a heavy burden to bear, it had to be: the secrets of crossing over into universes that were their own, but also not. If there was one constant in science, in all of the variables, it was that there were always people ready to kill for a taste of the future, for even a glimpse of it.

Rick didn’t come out of portals, rundown and beat, for no reason.

“I’ll go and put Beth to bed,” Rick said, ignoring the elephant in the room with the same kind of stubbornness that had manifested in his daughter. He sounded drunk again and while that was beginning to seem more and more like a given when it came to him, she knew that something was forcing his hand to pick up one more bottle than he would have a month ago.

But she didn’t say anything. Rick cradled Beth to his chest with the same gentleness he only showed his most precious inventions, and Saheli tried to relax at the sight of them, and what it meant.

_“Then I guess I won’t come back next time, will I?”_

With how jumpy Rick had been as of late, the words bounced alongside him in her mind, tripping over each other in the same rough rumble of his voice, forcing her to consider Rick as the flight risk he was.

“Goodnight, baby,” she heard him say from Beth’s room, his voice carrying down the stairs like it always did. The thing about Rick was that he wanted to be heard, and he was... his presence, his voice, everything about him was loud and abrupt no matter what. Saheli waited patiently--though her heart and brain were brimming with too many things to name--for him to close the door and jump down the stairs like a man with nothing to lose.

The couch felt cold without Beth and Rick beside her like the house felt frighteningly empty without Diane there to fill it, so she was grateful when Rick’s warmth settled beside her even if he had been colder than she had ever known him to be recently. Rick was mean, okay? He was rude, and callous, and he could be a massive prick at the best of times, but that wasn’t all he was. He could be kind with them all-- _his favourite girls_ , Rick called them, though Diane was there less and less to hear it--and she thrived on that. Now…

“I hate change,” Saheli mumbled into Rick’s lab-coat, the quiet of the air making her want to breath her truth into the air. She wanted to tell Rick that she cared for him and his family, that she wanted things to turn back, that she wanted to care for him like others before her hadn’t, but she didn’t know how. How could she possibly phrase any of that in a way that wouldn’t scare him off? Rick was cynical and confusing, possessive and afraid of having possessions in case he lost them, and expectations were his undoing.

Rick stretched his arm out, tucking her under his chin like she was a little girl, and she went willingly. “She’s not expected to make it to the morning,” Rick said eventually, and Saheli felt like crying all over again. “She doesn’t want to see us. Any of us.”

The unsaid was not unspoken and it coated the air with tar until Saheli’s lungs felt like they were being clogged and weighed down. It wasn’t that Diane didn’t want to see them; it was that she didn’t want them to see her. Diane was proud and like Rick in the sense that she didn't feel like a real person more often than not. She was larger than life, her personality and beauty enough to bring men to their knees, and it was easy to see sometimes how she managed to make someone like Rick fall in love with her and everything about her.

Diane's biggest secret was that she handled weakness just as well as Rick did: Saheli had tried to visit once, and she hadn’t tried again after the sobbing, angry fit that Diane had fallen into. Saheli and Rick both knew that her strength was as much of a weakness as any other quality; it was a virtue that, once turned on its head, resulted in stubbornness and anger.

Rick only got to see her because he was _Rick._ He got away with things he shouldn’t, and he didn’t know how to express the fact that he cared, he didn’t know how to make things better except for curing her… and he wasn’t allowed to. He must have felt so _trapped,_ Saheli could feel her heart bleeding for him.

“Change--change is a disease.” Rick murmured into her hair, his breath ruffling her curls so they pressed uncomfortably into her face. She still couldn’t find the strength to even lift a finger to brush the strands out of her eyes, but that didn’t matter because Rick was combing his fingers through the mess he was made anyway. “Everything is just slipping through my fingers, Pluto. The science, the--the relationship shit, the having a normal life… It’s all getting away from me.”

But Rick had never _wanted_ to have a normal life. 

“What has been happening to you, Rick?” Saheli asked lightly, placing her hand on his chest, letting herself be soothed by the way his heart beat steadily under his rib cage. “You… haven’t been yourself, _amico._ ”

Rick was affectionate normally, but it wasn’t like this: he was ablaze most of the time, leaving his mark in fleeting hugs and high-fives, not this slow, warm embrace that was burning Saheli from the inside out. Something had to have happened, and Saheli needed to know. Diane was dying, Rick was leaving more and more often, Beth was growing up, and Saheli needed to be the glue keeping them together anyway.

"M-76ς is only one possibility, Pluto," Rick said. "That's us. And I... I knew that going in. I knew that if I wanted to, I could duck into some other Rick's universe, and even take you and Beth with me. Diane is--she's gone, she's been gone, and I've realised that I can't just leave. Not in the way I thought I would when things got bad." _  
_

Oh no.

Things didn't just _get bad_ for Rick, he didn't let them. If he thought that something was going wrong, that meant something was outside of his control; and the one thing that Rick had taught her was that nothing was outside of his control. Nothing. So what could have happened, what could have gone so horribly, viciously wrong that Rick was tilting her head back, peering down into her eyes with genuine concern etched in his every feature? "Rick, what have you _done?"_

Only because Saheli had only just started to edge out, only just started to push back and explore everything that Rick made as an embodiment of himself, and now... now that might mean more than colourful smoke and devices that made it so she could fly or walk on water.

Because--because that was what Saheli saw when she walked into the garage, that was what she couldn't help but notice: the good intentions. Beth's toys could be dangerous, but that was because Beth was, by nature, a walking time-bomb, a wildcard that suited the playful sharp edges of Rick's inventions. Rick never, ever asked Saheli for help with something that ended up being dangerous; she had been in many an explosion, and had narrowly avoided being burned or seriously injured on more than one occasion. Rick was always good for shielding her, though, able to tell the warning signs of a disaster waiting to happen and spinning into action faster than she could blink

This was... something else entirely.

Rick looked regretful, but it mixed with his typical smugness until his face was twisted up in a distinctly strange way. "There're fucking feds in space," he said, his nose scrunching upwards in disgust, and Saheli would have sworn that his heart skipped a beat at the confession that followed. "I've been doing some things, Saheli, some real fucking good things, but they're threatened by me. It's all governments, they're always scared of the smartest person in the room and that's me in every galaxy they know, son."

So all those times that Rick came home... he was running from an alien FBI? What the fuck?

Saheli shot up from her slightly reclined position, taking maybe a little too much satisfaction in the way Rick had to throw his head back to avoid getting hit in the nose by her skull. Her dark curls flopped in front of her eyes but she was quick to take the scrunchie that lived on her right wrist and throw her hair into a sloppy bun, not even breaking eye-contact with the scientist in front of her that was looking more apprehensive by the second.

Rick was--he was making a difference. On worlds Saheli could barely fathom, and in universes where he would always refuse to take her, he was doing something important. Saheli had always wanted to do that.

"Take me with you," she said flatly (though one slip would have her emotions spilling to the floor), boring into his eyes with the same intensity that a predator would stare down its prey with. She had been desperate to ask him for such a long time, the desire to go with him having been strong with the idea of space alone, but purpose? Purpose in the universe was what Rick had been looking for, and he had found it. He had _found_ it, and he could share it with Saheli, despite her being less deserving of it. "I can help, I can try and-"

"You don't understand," and then it was Rick surging forward, capturing her by the wrists. Saheli could see it then, the sadness in his eyes that came from losing hope, love, dreams... "They're--they're getting stronger and even though the little bastards are no match for me, they could get to you. Beth. Earth. You're only just twenty years old, and I think I've fucked you over just by knowing you."

Anger, brief but powerful, boiled in Saheli's heart as she heard what he was _really_ saying. Rick thought that he should quit for Beth--for her. He thought he should give up his life and dreams for them, that he was capable of doing anything other than making their lives better. For someone so smart, Saheli could honestly say that she had never met anyone so emotionally blind before. "Rick," she said, the spark of passion in her heart fanning the flames that danced in her throat. "You let me into your life. I don't have any talents, any skills, or anything other than an interest, but you still let me be apart of your inventions, apart of your _family._ I don't care if it was because I was just another pretty face-" that might have been a lie, but neither of them had to acknowledge that. "-you have to let me be apart of this too."

Now that she knew what he was doing, what he was up against? There was no way in hell that he would be going through that alone. 

"I can't..."

Looking at Rick, Saheli knew that she would be apart of his adventures soon, one way or another. He needed someone to be there for him, someone to keep him on the straight and narrow like his friends wouldn't. She loved them, of course, but they were... strange.

* * *

_"Hello, Saheli," Birdperson said, inclining his head deeply. Saheli threw aside the instinct that told her to reflexively throw her hand up in the universal peace sign, and copied the motion. Rick looked on, and she thought he might have looked just a little bit impressed at her manners and the fact that she hadn't passed out upon meeting a... literal Bird Person. "Rick has told me of your friendship. Kin of Rick's is kin of mine, and you shall always find yourself welcome in my nest."_

_Saheli found herself smiling--she had never been called Rick's kin before and she found that she strangely liked it. She was apart of his family, wasn't she?--and was about to reply in kind when Squanchy waltzed over, his yellow eyes darting between her and Rick anxiously._

_"Hey, Rick," Squanchy sniffed the air in a way that wasn't too dissimilar to a cat or dog. "So you're telling me that humans don't all look like you? Thought you said she was family too--doesn't look it."_

_Family? Her and Rick?_

_Saheli looked down at herself questioningly; she had two arms, two legs, and while she definitely had some bits that Rick didn't, she was unmistakably human. She opened her mouth, ready to ask him what about her wasn't like Rick, only to stop as Rick let out a deep sigh. "Squanchy, my man," Rick started. "It's not polite in our culture to draw attention to the colour of our skin. And--just so you know--it's because we have a bunch of races and ethnicities that makes most of us look different. Okay?"_

_Ah._

_Aliens that weren't familiar with the concept of race--she hadn't heard of that one before. For some reason, her race wasn't as big of an issue as her species was in space, and that was... more of a relief than she had thought it would be. People were speciest, sure, but for once she wasn't just her looks. She was just a mystery, and she was more than okay with that._

_"You are alike in other ways," Birdperson said dismissively over Squanchy's half-assed apology. "You will realise that soon enough if you have not already."_

_Rick held his hands up as though they would protect him from more questions--or, in the case of Birdperson, more deadpan statements--and began to talk loudly over the top of them. She was like Rick Sanchez, huh?_

_She'd like to prove that one day._

* * *

So Saheli begged. And begged. And pleaded and asked and even, on occasion, shed a few tears, and after a solid year of that, she was finally allowed to go on her first adventure. She was twenty-one, so he took them out for celebration drinks afterwards, laughing and holding her hair back for her after just three shots (she was a lightweight, okay?); and it wasn't like he hadn't tried to get her to drink with him a few times before-- _"Saheli, if you were--if you were Australian you'd be smashed out of your mind, so just have a swig!"_ \--but this time, she didn't have a real problem with celebrating.

She was an adult; she was going on adventures to collect poppies and seeds and minerals that were important for--well, something, though she couldn't really piece together what he was doing even though she hovered over his shoulder to hand him scissors and juicers and whatever else he needed.

For the first time in probably forever, Saheli felt like she was doing something important. She was going out more and more often, finding more solace in space than she did on Earth, and she was... happy. Not that she wasn't before, but somehow it felt more real, more tangible because she knew that her dream, her life, was only a button away, and Rick was more accommodating than she could have ever hoped for.

"C'mon, Pluto," Rick said, and Beth--turning six soon, with the world already falling at her feet--swivelled her head nearly 360 degrees to stare at her father. Her newly cut bob that she had done herself brushed against her cheeks, her Hello Kitty clips falling out of her hair despite the fact that Saheli had only just put them in. Rick had already told her that he wanted to go on a trip this weekend, so Beth was staying with Saheli's dad. She was a little intimidated by him but, in a move that reminded Saheli of Rick, she refused to acknowledge it or even talk about it when Saheli tried to sit down and discuss the visit with her.

It wasn't like she didn't know Saheli's dad--Beth, Saheli always liked to joke, was his favourite daughter between the two of them--but he was tall. And bulky. And his English wasn't the best which could make him seem short, despite the fact that he was the sweetest man that Saheli could ever know.

"Are you absolutely sure that I can't come with you?" Beth asked, batting her eyelashes at Rick like she did whenever she wanted a second dessert. Rick normally gave in (he was secretly a huge softie and, of course, if he was getting a second dessert then he was going to get Beth one. He wasn't cruel), but this time he just plucked her clips from her hair and put them back in swiftly.

Doing a better job than Saheli did. Naturally.

"No, sweetie," Rick said. "It's for grown-ups only, like daddy's flask and guns and bombs. Remember?"

Rick's inventions had taken on a distinctly weapons-centric approach recently, which wasn't really surprising considering how things had managed to develop in the past year. Things had gone from nothing to everything as Rick supplied guns and bombs and bullets to what he called activists. Saheli... couldn't say she agreed. She was a pacifist, after all, and the idea of even supplying weapons of murder and violence to people seemed irresponsible. She wasn't even afraid to say so. She had brought up the conversation more times than what was probably reasonable, and she knew that her opinions wouldn't be changing anytime soon.

Thankfully, Rick wasn't insistent on trying to change her as a person; she secretly thought that he liked having someone that challenged him and his ideas instead of just blindly agreeing with him, and she was grateful for that.

"Ugh, _fine,"_ Beth rolled her eyes, kicking the floor none-too gently. "I'll go and hang out with Mr. Saheli's dad then, and have a good time without you. So there," she stuck her tongue out; Saheli just barely avoided laughing, and herded Beth to the door.

"Do you have your bag? Your toothbrush? Your games? Your pyjamas? Your-"

"Yes, yes," Beth waved away Saheli's questions, her fingers sparkling with glitter from her brilliant to paint her bedroom by herself. "You go and do boring stuff while I eat ice-cream for breakfast." Under Saheli's careful supervision, she skipped across the road, knocking on the door once before letting herself in.

Saheli shook her head. Beth was going to be a force to be reckoned with in the future, and she was excited to see it.

"Ready to hit the road, momma-hen?" Rick smiled at her--and it was a genuinely nice smile too, that she attempted to burn into her brain. His smile with other people--the people he sold weapons to, for example--wasn't the same, was more shark-like and predatory, and she needed to be able to compare the two as she began to realise what she had probably known all along.

Rick treated her like she was special. Not just because of the role she played with Beth, or even because it was useful to have another set of steady hands in his workshop, but because he didn't think she was a contract. An obligation. He was hardening up, slowly but surely, and if she had met him later on then she probably wouldn't have ever seen the sides of him that she had seen, and she counted herself lucky.

"Of course," Saheli smiled back. She wondered if her smile was different too, around Rick versus anyone else. "Where are we going?"

Rick fiddled with his portal gun, his coat flapping behind him even though he was standing still and they were indoors; Saheli bet that it was an invention to suit his need for drama. Eventually, a portal opened in the floor, flooding her vision with brilliant green, something she still didn't know if she'd ever get used to. "I have a meeting," Rick said, hopping through the portal with practiced ease as soon as the words left his mouth.

Saheli didn't hesitate in following his lead.

* * *

"For the last time, Pluto, I don't want to go and get groceries--they sell Sanchezium here, you know that? Do you want me to die, is that it?"

Saheli rolled her eyes. They had barely been on the planet for five minutes, and she was already being delegated to the grocery shopper? Really? She expected Rick to be better than that. "Sanchezium isn't even real! You made that up."

Rick raised his stupid eyebrow. "Did I? Did I really? Have fun saying that when I'm dead. Bitch."

Was she really only here for Rick to tease her and make her get groceries? Rick must have noticed the sudden uncertainty that had settled over her, because he sighed long and deep, and held out his hand. Saheli waited for a second for him to do whatever it was he was going to do, staring blankly at his scarred and calloused palm until he grabbed her wrist with his other hand, and placed it in the one turned upright.

"You don't--you don't like it when I sell my weapons," Rick said, not needing to ask the question: Saheli was open and honest with her thoughts on the matter. "I'm selling a gun--a really nice gun--to a good client. Krombopulos Michael. Always pays in full, up-front, never asks too many questions, never double-crosses me because he's smart. You're here because of where we're going after."

That was... unexpectedly sweet of him. "And where we're going needs us to have groceries?"

"Now she's getting it!" Rick winked, and relief replaced worry. She wasn't being delegated to house wife and provider, only brought on adventures so she could pick up that stupid alien cereal that Rick liked, she was being offered trust. And his hand. Rick never, ever let her go off by herself when it came to alien planets, which meant she often sat beside him uncomfortably as he bartered and bragged about his weapon-making prowess. She was too _fragile,_ too _human,_ and even though he never said it, she wasn't a genius. "Come on. Get some snacks, and we'll meet outside here in... twenty?"

Saheli wasn't dumb. She knew that. She just... wasn't as smart as Rick. Him dragging her along on adventures seemed pointless and dangerous if she couldn't understand Glaarnpap at the drop of a hat, or operate any weapon she came across.

Rick had walked her to the entrance of a store, not by the wrist like he normally did--hell, he didn't even normally hold Beth's hand, he preferred to pick her up--but by tangling their fingers together.

"Sure," she said finally, kicking herself for even worrying in the first place. "Yeah, that sounds fun."

True to his word, he was waiting outside of the grocery store when she exited seventeen minutes later, holding a paper bag to her chest so the spiky fruits she had chosen wouldn't tear a hole and fall to the floor. "You ready for this, Saheli?" Rick asked, his face split in a roguish grin that made him look twenty years younger. "No turning back now."

Just what had she gotten herself into?

She wasn't too alarmed though: as they weaved in between pedestrians, Rick performed tricks and joked with her, snatching the paper bag out of her arms and holding it carelessly by his hip, dancing out of her reach when she lunged for it, laughing all the while. This wasn't trying to collect minerals from a mountain top, dodging spears thrown by the natives. This wasn't a trip to an arctic planet, where Saheli's hair was frozen solid and thick blizzards blinded her to the dangers of yeti-like aliens. Rick wasn't acting like they were in danger and this--this was _fun_.

The other adventures were too of course, but there wasn't a threat of danger, no signs she had to pick up on for a twisted guessing game of fate.

She wasn't worrying about Beth or Rick or herself: she was just a tourist, enjoying the pink sky and pinker moon that orbited the planet, close enough that she could make out individual details in the rock crevices.

This planet was a dream.

Eventually, after Rick had incited the anger of half a dozen strangers through his antics, the bag was placed back in Saheli's arms, and his hands were placed over her eyes. One blazed with a living warmth, and the other was significantly cooler: his robotic replacement (that had made her scream when she first saw it, it was terrifying), touching her through the synthetic skin.

"Jus' let me..." Rick trailed off as he manoeuvred them around something, and Saheli jolted when she felt leaves brushing against her thigh. She could have smacked Rick when he chuckled at her expense, but her hands were unfortunately full.

"You're lucky, you prick," Saheli said, but she still leaned into him when he shuffled along behind her. Mostly to put him off balance, but also to take advantage of this affectionate spell while she had the chance. "That I feel like being nice today, otherwise you would be in big trouble, mister." She heard him say something like, _you're nice everyday,_ but pretended that she didn't. If she wanted to pretend that she was some kind of badass, who was he to stop her?

"I guess you don't want to see your surprise then," Saheli could just feel him smiling like the smug bastard he was. "No--no drama, I'll just shoot us a portal home and we can throw your snacks in the trash. No biggie, dawg."

Rick _sucked._

"Riiiick," Saheli squirmed under his hands, trying to get a glimpse of where they were. "Let me see where you've taken me--tell me it isn't like that thing you did last time, where you sprayed that air freshener you made in a room of cockroaches and grasshopper carcasses, because if it is I'm killing you and then myself. That's final." Disgusting bugs-she couldn't stand the things.

Rick, the douchebag, laughed again. "I guess this is it then," Rick said, sounding proud of himself. It was a tone that Saheli was extremely familiar with, and she had never minded it before; now, though, she could punch the smarmy dick. It wasn't too terrible; she had said some less than friendly things in Italian to Rick while ducking to avoid the spears, or when she tumbled through a portal on the verge of hypothermia. So Saheli waited patiently for his hands to lift from where they obscured her view, and...

And she was blown away. 

Immediately, all she could see were the flowers. They were orange, glowing dimly as they swayed in a warm breeze, with deep, rich blues and purples scattered among the orange mass. They were as tall as her waist and, as she waded through them, Rick close at her heels, she noticed how they made her skin shine a beautiful bronze and Saheli couldn't help but feel like some sort of goddess. She felt like Persephone, taking in this absurd, natural wonder, and that would make Rick Hades: able to appreciate the beauty in things that weren't alive.

His inventions weren't exactly corpses, but the point was conveyed nonetheless.

"Rick..." Her voice trailed away, stolen by this beautiful planet with its gorgeous sky and lovely flowers, oxygen taken right from her lungs as the intensity of the situation dawned on her. Somehow, when they were in danger, it was easy to forget that they were experiencing something beautiful and unique and new, on an alien world; sometimes she couldn't help but pay more attention to the racing of her heart than that fact.

Never again.

"Beautiful, huh?" Rick said from behind her, his eyes scanning the horizon when she turned to face him. "I came here for the first time when you would have been--gosh, probably sixteen? And I knew that I was going to show it to you. One day."

Why now? Saheli asked herself, but it didn't take long for her to come to the conclusion that... it didn't matter. Rick could have felt guilty for selling weapons despite the fact she didn't like it, he could have done this as a belated birthday present, but that didn't change the fact that she was here. Rick was here. He could have had a million reasons and ways to leave everything behind, but he hadn't and he was _here._ And maybe that was a low bar--hell maybe the bar didn't even exist--but it was them. It was Rick staying on Earth despite having more options. It was him knowing what Saheli wanted--and needed--and taking her to a beautiful alien flower field on a trip without purpose.

"Thank you," in a flash, Saheli's arms were wrapped around Rick's neck, bag of groceries dropped to the floor, and her face was buried in the crook of his neck (she had to stand on her toes just to do that--while Rick was extraordinarily tall, she was painfully average in height). Her next words were muffled by his throat, but neither of them cared. "You didn't have to."

Rick didn't say anything, but his long arms curled gently around her waist, and he hunched forward so she could lay her feet flat against the ground again. 

Eventually, they unwrapped their arms from each other, and sat on the ground by the spilled fruit. "Hell yeah, you got a flaknyjerp!" Rick cried, holding up a vaguely strawberry shaped fruit that was bright purple. "I'm not sharing this with you, by the way."

Saheli laughed.

* * *

"Everything's dangerous, Rick, but I don't want to let you go through that by yourself!" Saheli was on the verge of tears--thankfully, Beth was on a camping trip with her school and wasn't there to see how mascara was running down her face, and how her stifled sobs were interrupted by the occasional hiccup. "I'm not letting you leave! Not without--not without help, or a plan, or anything like that!"

Rick was angrier than Saheli had ever seen him before.

She had seen him frustrated and belligerent over Diane's condition, had seen him throwing insults at people who tried to con him out of his inventions, and had witnessed the cold, flat anger that slowly overtook him when someone implied that he didn't know as much as he thought he did. This was much, much different. The expression that dripped onto his face was livid, and he reminded her somewhat of an animal when he snarled at her, running his fingers through his hair like he was tempted to rip the strands from his scalp. "You're not coming, and that's final," he growled. "I've already made up my mind--Beth can stay at you or with Diane's mother for a few weeks while I sort this out, and you will stay _put._ "

So everything he had said--not even a year ago--had it all been a fucking lie?

* * *

_They were laying down on the grass, the flowers cushioning them as well, as a deep red bled through the pink of the daytime sky. The stars became more easily visible, twinkling in the heavens like how they twinkled in Rick's eyes on the good days, and Saheli let herself relax. Tension bled out through her body, and she shifted so that her chin was tilted up, the back of her skull pressing against the ground as she unclenched her fists._

_"I feel like I've been using you, Saheli," Rick said, his eyes fixed on the sky._

_"Wow. You're actually using my name," Saheli ignored his statement. It was true anyway: if it wasn't Pluto then it was momma-hen, kid, dawg, and even Sah-Sah on the incredibly rare occasion when he decided to entertain Beth. She had never minded it, per se, but she always just... acknowledged it. Diane (before she... well, died) got called Diane, Beth got called Beth, and Saheli got called Pluto. That was just how it worked. "Should I be worried?"_

_Rick sighed and, true to what was slowly becoming the evening's theme, didn't answer the question directly. "You're good for Beth, you know that? She--Diane was always too focused on our problems. I... wasn't there enough. Y-you're good with her though. Know what she likes and stuff." He hesitated. "I forget sometimes. I know you don't like me to talk about weapon shit around her, but I just... forget."_

_"Yeah, well," Saheli glanced at him briefly, before staring at a light purple cloud that was drifting overhead. "I know what it's like to lose a mom."_

_Saheli knew what Beth needed, because she had been in that situation before. She had been painfully aware of everything she had missed out on for the longest time, and she was trying not to let that happen to Beth. Beth was... fine. She was flourishing, a flower with a thorny disposition better suited to the garden than any other blossom. Saheli was helping her grow, picking up where Diane had left off because she couldn't help but remember what it was like to need a mom._

_"And I know what it's like to have a shit dad," Rick sounded too bitter for the beautiful place they were in, but it wasn't surprising. They weren't there for no reason; the threat wasn't physical this time, but it was meant to be verbal; emotional. She was surprisingly okay with that. "I bet Beth knows too._

_Rick wasn't the perfect father. She wasn't going to lay there and try and tell him that he was, because they would both stew in that lie for years to come. Instead, Saheli was going to tell him the truth: "You're the best father for Beth," Saheli smiled a half-smile at him. "No-one else could understand her the way you do." Rick was doing better too; he had been trying so hard after Diane, becoming more and more involved despite the fact that it went against his nature as someone who believed in absolute independence._

_It was true, no matter what: Rick wasn't the best dad, but he was Beth's dad and she loved him. And despite all of his posturing, he loved her too._

_Rick barked out a laugh. "You're too fucking good for this, Saheli," he said, and Saheli looked around at the beauty and serenity that cloaked this small bubble, and she found that incredibly hard to believe._

_"I don't think so," she said simply._

_Rick gave an aborted shrug of his shoulders, and changed the topic. "You know," he started conversationally, "you and I; we're a universal irregularity. See, Ricks don't always have a Saheli, and when we do, we don't normally meet them the way I met you." At Saheli's curious look, he continued. "There's just something about M-76ς, Pluto, that doesn't work according to the average timeline. I spent too long in space too young, me and Diane had Beth too late, and... and you're there too, just when we're trying to make room for a kid..."_

_Wow. Of all the things in the universe, Saheli wasn't particularly used to being called unique; she was, in fact, used to being anything but that she just blew out a deep breath._

_"Does that change anything about us?" It was a genuine question. She couldn't, for the life of her, imagine why he was so fixated on that fact--it was interesting, but what did it matter?_

_"I drank too much and I slept around too much," His eyes were brighter than starlight, and she found herself entranced too easily by it. "And that's just how Ricks are. That's all we are--bad decisions."_

* * *

"Just give me one reason, Rick, one good reason why I can't come and-"

"I don't want anything bad to happen to you!"

Saheli blinked, tears finally falling down her cheeks. Her voice was a broken whisper when she spoke next: "I don't even _understand_ why you don't see how that is _exactly_ how I feel."

* * *

_"Really?"_

_Rick just looked at her like she was dense, and while she was used to that--Rick wasn't the best at controlling his facial expressions when people couldn't catch onto his thought process--she rolled her eyes at him. "I'll give you some shitty advice, Pluto," he said. "When the going gets tough and you know everything except for what you need to do... just ruin your life. It puts everything in perspective."_

_"Haha," Saheli said dryly._

_"Hey, don't knock it 'til you try it!" Rick reached for his flask, and Saheli didn't try and stop him._

* * *

Tears slid down Saheli's cheeks, from pain, and exhaustion, and fear even as she clutched her pistol to her chest, seeking cover behind burning wreckage. Her hair was a mess, falling from its previously practical ponytail and slightly burnt from the plasma charge that had been aimed at her head.

Rick was laughing, though, and it was a struggle and a half not to abandon her common sense and laugh with him; thankfully, logic won out and she didn’t give away her hiding spot.

It was nice to see Rick relaxed enough to laugh, and do some--quite frankly--gross things in order to amuse himself further. If she hadn’t known him for as long as she had, she would have been appalled, but her sensibilities had been shot at by the Gromflomite soldiers as well as her body, and she couldn’t find anything in her willing to give a shit.

“Pluto!” The friendly nickname felt out of place on the war-torn battlefield beneath their feet, but she smiled at him anyway, wiping sweat from her brow. “C’mon, sweetie, lighten up! We’ve nearly got these bast--shit!” He ducked to avoid a hail of bullets flung at him by a mangled soldier, sending back three shots in rapid succession even though Saheli knew that he would have been able to take the alien out with one.

The first bullet knocked the gun from the Gromflomite’s hand, along with at least one finger. 

The second hit him in what Saheli could only assume was similar to a human knee--in any case, it was already messy and bleeding sluggishly when the bullet struck it, causing him to fall to the floor.

And the final bullet sealed the deal, tearing through his brain matter like tissue and adding to the wasteland that their rebel efforts had created. Saheli aimed another shot at a different soldier’s back, and scrambled to her feet in order to get to Rick. The battle was almost over, she knew it--there were casualties on both sides, but Rick was clearly confident that they had the upper hand. She just needed to get to him so he could tell her his plan, because Rick always had a plan no matter what.

It was dangerous to go into the open, but it was even riskier to take the longer route of scurrying behind trash and bodies, and the chances of her running into a soldier were significantly higher. She just needed to trust Rick--he’d have her back.

“Cover me!” She yelled, hoping that she was loud enough to be heard over the gunfire and screaming of soldiers and rebels alike. 

Fuck, Rick made her crazy.

There was no time to think about how much she would cry later, and how Rick would let her curl into him and soak up all of her guilt and fear like a sponge, treating her more gently than he would most people in her position.

She jumped over her hiding spot, cursing the fact that her legs weren’t as long and lean as Rick’s the whole way through. She slid on the ground to avoid a Gromflomite wielding a sword, shooting up and through the top of his head as her pants got soaked in mud and gore--she choked back vomit as black blood splattered over her face too, and she tried to ignore how her tears were still leaking steadily from her eyes.

 _These_ were the adventures that she didn’t want to see, but she had made a promise to herself that she wouldn’t let Rick get hurt again

“Saheli!” Rick called out, and she glanced at him quickly before returning to her objective of not getting noticed amongst the more threatening and taller rebels that were moving in the opposite direction.

The split-second look she shot his way, the one that let her see that he was wide-eyed and covered in blood but otherwise okay, was too long.

A Gromflomite soldier aimed his laser gun at Rick, and Saheli had a new objective that pushed her to run faster than she ever had in her life, her heart pounding and her chest heaving from exertion, to save Rick.

Rick, who had sworn to her that he would never need protecting, was too busy watching her--too busy tracing her with his normally cold eyes set ablaze to make sure _she_ wasn’t injured--hadn’t seen the Gromflomite settled yards away with a gun balanced on a car door, aiming right at his chest.

Something made him slip, and she knew--she fucking knew--that she had a chance to do something that mattered. She had the chance to save the man that had let her in his workshop and into his life, over others that were otherwise pushed away.

She ran, the burn in her chest nothing compared to the burning in her eyes as she watched the man who had helped her grow and learn get aimed at, the metaphorical target on his chest painted in blood. 

Saheli was scared. She wasn’t ashamed to admit it, but Rick was--he was _important_ to the universe in ways that she would never be able to measure up to in her entire life. She didn’t want to die-- _God she didn’t want to die_ \--but she wasn’t smart like Rick, she didn’t know what else she could do that would help him live.

“Duck!” She screamed desperately, waving her arms desperately as she threw getting unnoticed out of the window. “Rick-- _stupido! Per favore, per favore!--_ duck!”

Rick looked ashen, coming to a stop in the middle of the battlefield as the war raged around them, blood squelching under their boots and bones crunching underfoot. He was being the stupid Rick that she knew he could be sometimes, the one who accidentally gassed himself when he locked himself in with the test subject, the one that let Beth play with knives without supervision, and she thought that he would be _different_ here.

It would have been fine if he was just being the idiot that spat wisecracks and took drugs, because he was still handling himself then--he was still _moving,_ but now...

The soldier had re-adjusted his gun, she could see him out of the corner of her eyes as she swung herself over one of their allies, tripping when a Gromflomite soldier--the lower half of his body missing, grabbed at her ankle, making her want to stumble away and fall into the land of the living.

This was a bad dream, because she had had this nightmare once before--after Rick came back once before, stumbling into the garage where she had been fretting all night, bleeding from the gut but still triumphant and drunk--and it was the same then as it was now: Rick _wasn’t moving_.

“ _S_ _tupido!”_ She sobbed, throwing herself at Rick when she got close enough, right as she heard the loud charge of the gun, but she had been stupid too. She hadn’t seen the second shooter aiming directly at her, hidden so expertly away behind pillars and wreckage that shooting at them would have been impossible.

But Rick had seen them, and his eyes hadn’t just been tracking her.

She would have taken the bullet happily if he just saved himself, but he had known her for far too long. That was the only explanation for it. 

He was a genius, and he had seen it somehow, what she was ready and willing to do--in the twitching of her fingers, or the shifting of her feet as she forced him down and angled him away--and she met his eyes briefly before he shoved her behind him, using his legs to switch their position faster than she could blink.

The first shooter didn’t hit him--the one that had been aiming at her did.

“No!”

Just like that, the entire planet stood still. Saheli’s scream had captured the attention of soldiers and rebels alike but she barely noticed them, her gun was immediately leveled with the chest of the fucking _bastard_ that had shot at them.. His eyes looked surprised as he looked from his smoking gun to the still body of _her_ Rick, and she didn’t hate seeing his eyes scrunch closed when her bullet passed through his armour like butter.

Saheli had never been one for revenge, but this--this was something she had to make an exception for.

The unnamed Gromflomite fell to the dirt with a muffled thump, ignored by his fellow soldiers as they moved to catch a glimpse of what had long assumed to be impossible.

Rick Sanchez was dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to commission me for an OC origin story of your own, click [HERE](https://xbloodrunsredx.tumblr.com/post/188422662476/writing-comissions)! 
> 
> Make sure to drop a kudos and comment, and feel free to submit requests/art/etc to my tumblr inbox!


	2. this is a man's man's man's world

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> check previous chapter for a surprise ;)

The world seemed to stand still for just a moment.

Then: “Is that--is that Sanchez?” She heard one of the other rebels murmur before the sound of her own breathing drowned them out. She dropped to her knees, her trembling fingers cradling Rick’s face as she struggled to rein in her emotions, gasping in the effort it took not to crumble when she took in the unbreakable, intelligent, _unkillable_ Rick Sanchez.

She removed her gloves before touching him, searching for a pulse or any sign that he might just have a trick up his sleeve, and it wasn’t really him with the gaping, smouldering hole in his chest. 

“ _C_ _heck the body!_ ” She heard a Gromflomite say, and she couldn’t find it in herself to react when another rebel stepped forward 

She couldn’t feel a pulse. She couldn’t find it, and it could have been because her hands were shaking, but she didn’t think so. The wound on his chest was too severe, she knew that, but she still… she still couldn’t let it be true.

She had tried to _save_ him. _Why didn’t he just let her?_

_“--the portal gun--”_

Fuck. Saheli fumbled for her gun, her trigger finger slick with blood, and pointed it at the Gromflomite that had spoken, causing a ripple of unease to spread through the crowd that had gathered around them. It only took a second for Birdperson to step forward, his wings spread slightly and fluffed up to look bigger. His voice was monotone as usual, but even Saheli could hear the underlying emotion that threatened to rise up, “Let us tend to our dead,” he said. “As you tend to your wounded. Or we will be forced to defend ourselves.”

The rebels nodded in assent, placing themselves in front of Saheli and Rick, weapons at the ready.

“We just want the portal gun,” a Gromflomite said bravely, before he collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut. Squanchy lowered his gun, which was three times the size of him without the special _growing drug_ that Rick had helped manufacture for him, and growled. 

Saheli didn’t have to look to know that the GF soldiers were too scattered, too wounded, too afraid to do anything but run. They’d recoup, but the extra time would be necessary for them to decide what they could possibly do without Rick--there was anxious muttering as the gromflomites began their retreat, and Saheli knew that some people wouldn’t bother sticking around. Without Rick’s strategies, his inventions, his strange ability to convince people to follow along with him… they had nothing.

It was hard to picture her life without Rick, and she shook her head--tears flying to spatter on the ground--to rid herself of the thought.

Rick would never let himself die. There had to be another plan, another strategy that she just hadn’t figured out yet. They would be okay because they had to be or everything would collapse around her. And it would be her fault. Rick had friends, he had so many friends--and they liked Saheli because Rick liked her, and if he was really dead and they thought she was to blame… she would die here too.

“Help me carry him,” she said to Birdperson, who obliged with a slight nod. The rest of the rebels had their back as they carried Rick over dead bodies, over discarded weapons and personal belongings that had fallen from the pockets of people who couldn’t wait to go home to their families.

Blood painted pictures of smiling families, smearing over glass and frames and paper, turning the smiles into something more frightening in the light of torches that were swung by her allies.

She knew what Rick would say. “Pick up your weapons,” she said, stepping over a single boot, her words distant and detached in the same way they had been when she had been told about Diane’s death. “And your belongings. Toss some over to the left, so we don’t lead them straight to our location.” She jerked her head, and chewed on her bottom lip when a few soldiers obeyed her immediately. She didn’t know if creating a more widespread mess would even work, with the amount of blood that was dripping from Rick and a handful of other soldiers.

It showed that something was happening, though, and she had a feeling that some people needed that reassurance now. She did too.

Their base was underground, with just about a hundred different escape routes to separate smaller strongholds, and onto the surface of the planet as well. Rick had used his inventions to dig under the ground, and gave them the ability to reinforce it at the click of a button. They had food, resources to clean water--and gluomph, a common liquid that the aliens that were apart of their group consumed--and places to store and load their weapons.

But that was all temporary.

She kicked the rock that obscured the entrance of the base, a small robot extending from a fissure to scan her face; clearing her with a chipper beep, the ground rumbling as stone shifted and groaned to expose the cold metal ladder.

She let Birdperson take Rick, a sob escaping from her lips at the sight of his slack face, allowing others to enter before her as she struggled not to fall apart right then and there. Was the hollowness in her chest there before Rick, or was it a symptom of where he had clawed his way through her ribs to her heart, making space for himself--a space he couldn’t help fill anymore. Nothing could last anymore, not without Rick there to make more things for them to survive, not without Rick to help soothe and mend her emotional wounds.

She had known that she had loved him, maybe more than anything or anyone, but she hadn’t anticipated the shortness of breath that came with her heart shattering into a million pieces, piercing her lungs and getting stuck in her flesh.

_Who was going to lead them now?_

For just a moment, Saheli considered going home, before a flash of realisation hit her like lightning, raising the hairs on her arms as she quickly clambered down the ladder, hitting the button on the side of wall to lock the entrance once more. Rick kept his portal gun in his breast pocket--even though he had needed to make more fuel for it anyway, he still placed it in his pocket, laughing off her concerns about not being able to use it.

 _“Come on, babe,”_ he had teased her. _“I can get one of the ingredients I need from the field--we won’t even need it, not with how much damage we’ve caused them--trust me!”_

Saheli shouldn’t have let it go. She should have made him charge it, so that he could have just opened a portal beneath her feet and escaped himself, so that they would have had a way to get back home when this was all over. _Pride cometh before the fall._ She had always briefly considered that his arrogance, that his overconfidence would get him hurt, but there was something about him having the intelligence to back up his swagger that made him seem invincible. 

She had known that he was human and prone to frangibility, more than most others, but she had forgotten. She dropped to the bottom, her boots clanking dully against the floor as she raised her hands to wipe away the signs of weakness, despite the human instinct in her that told her to cry.

She was emotional, she was vulnerable, but that wasn’t what people needed to see from her. Saheli needed to prove that they could be strong still, and if that meant trying to lock down her feelings until she was alone, so be it. The chatter ceased when she walked into the common area (separate from the sleeping quarters), her hair still singed and messy, her curls coarse from grime and ash, and her face smeared with blood and mud.

She was sure she looked horrible, but it seemed to grant her respect from a few of the rebels she wasn’t particularly close with, who looked dishevelled as well.

“Where’s Rick?” Saheli asked, voice as hard and cold as she could make it--which was not very. No one mentioned how her voice cracked, though, and only shifted uncomfortably, a few of them with bowed heads and teary eyes themselves. 

“W-we put him in his room,” a short, purple alien named Grunck finally spoke up in his squeaky voice. “We weren’t sure about w-where else we could put him, without--without contaminating our food.”

 _Fuck,_ that hurt to hear.

Saheli nodded shortly, pulling the rest of her hair free to tie it at the nape of her neck, getting it out of her sweaty face. “Clean yourselves up,” she said. “We start rationing more now, before we run out of our supplies. Eat what you need to function and no more--we can’t replace it as easily now.” Not without Rick and his portal gun.

Most of the aliens nodded their heads, but a tall, muscular alien named Klorkxan with an axe that was larger than Saheli was tall, forced himself to the front of the group, his one eye squinting threateningly. “I won’t take orders from Sanchez’s eye-candy,” he growled in his thick, accented English. “We shouldn’t have even brought his mangy corpse in here in the first place.”

There were a few gasps and hisses of outrage, along with the--significantly fewer--murmurs of agreement. It took Saheli every bit of strength left in her exhausted, weary soul not to rear back, and show him just how deeply his words hurt her. Rick wasn’t mangy, and she didn’t want to hear corpse used in relation to Rick--she just couldn’t deal with it. She shouldn’t have to deal with this, and she had so many emotions all vying for her attention that she was ready to toss the--the stupid cyclops to the GF.

“Shut your _fucking_ mouth,” Saheli managed to settle on anger. Through the fear, and deep-seated sadness, she managed to grab onto the burning anger that was churning in her stomach, boiling hot and threatening to consume her from the inside out. “You would not be alive if it weren’t for Rick. You would not exist at this moment if it wasn’t for everything he did for this cause,” she took a menacing step forward, and reveled in how he faltered slightly. “Don’t kid yourself into thinking you matter more than he does--did.”

The moron opened his mouth again and, this time, it wasn’t Saheli that was quick to shut him down. The crowd around him jostled him with their elbows, tugging at his ridiculous, skimpy, gladiator-style armour as a warning. 

“She could be like Sanchez, man,” she heard someone whisper. “She could be better than him--didn’t you see him? He took the bullet for her--she has to be important.”

Saheli had to get away. She stumbled through the crowd, heading towards Rick’s combined lab and bedroom, shoving people out of her way to get there, their condolences and questions falling on deaf ears as her ears rang.

What was she going to do now? Out of everything that had ever happened to her, every loss and harm that had ever come her way, this was something that she had never expected. Somehow the idea of Rick dying had never crossed her mind, despite all of the shit they had gone through together. It was meant to be impossible, it was meant to be anyone instead of him.

Saheli fumbled with the lock on Rick's door, gagging at the smell as she wrapped her arms around herself, her body shaking with sobs that got stuck in her lungs. "What can I do?" She asked Birdperson, who was carefully covering Rick's face with a sheet.

“You knew Rick perhaps better than all of us,” Birdperson said, stepping forward in a comforting way that shouldn’t have made Saheli feel even worse. “If anyone were to fix his portal-gun, it would be you. I believe Rick would have wanted it to be you.”

That wasn’t right--this wasn’t fair. She had come here to help Rick, and now she was _trapped_ with no way to get home, because Rick hadn’t let her die in his place. Living was never supposed to be harder than dying, but a selfish part of her--that she refused to let loose--wished that it had gone differently so she could have died and been happy with the knowledge that Rick hadn’t.

She couldn’t be the leader they wanted or needed; why couldn’t they _see_ that?

“You don’t understand,” she said numbly, wiping her skin down with a wet cloth and scrubbing memories away. “I’m not _smart,_ BP, I’m just some lucky little girl that he let get close because I was interested, okay? I just liked the inventions, and he wanted to show off, and--”

And he--Rick Sanchez, self-proclaimed _god_ \--had chosen her over him. What a joke. His fatal flaw was, like he always predicted it would be, because he let himself start caring. He left Beth to come and fight here, and he would have left Saheli too--but she had made him take her too, had forced her way into his life to try and keep him safe, and she had managed the opposite.

Once upon a time, she would have been happy to have the proof that Rick really did care but, knowing what she did now, she could have lived without it.

“He wanted you to live for a reason, Saheli,” Birdperson said, and Saheli nearly crumbled right then and there. “You have to help finish what he started. I believe that is what he would have wanted, and what he intended when he sacrificed himself for you.”

Saheli had never been the uncaring, ruthlessly intelligent type.

Rick was--Rick had been, though.

She couldn’t be like that. She couldn’t be Rick, no matter how much she had looked up to him--he was too smart, too apathetic, too cynical, and she couldn’t emulate that even if she tried. A hysterical little giggle escaped her lips at the idea of her managing to be anything like Rick when, in reality, she had just been a leech looking for validation in a community she didn’t deserve to be in. Rick had _earned_ the right to explore the universe, the _multiverse,_ and Saheli only made herself useful when it came to grabbing tools and fleeing.

She didn’t deserve to even try to be like Rick.

“I _can’t,”_ she cried, her face screwing up. “I really, really can’t, BP.”

Birdperson tilted his head. “You are not unintelligent, Saheli,” he said slowly. “I know that about you. My kind is not used to mourning in the same way that humans do; we recognise that every death and life is the result of a larger process. But I feel… regret, that Rick has passed. He was a good friend to me and my kin, and he will be missed. I can only express my sorrow in the tongue of my people and I suggest you do the same.”

Birdperson opened his mouth and released a long,warbling cry that pierced the air, making Saheli cringe slightly from the volume, lasting several minutes. Saheli could barely think of words in Italian, let alone English that could describe the pain of losing Rick, but sobbing would probably manage to convey some of that. He ended his song, looking at Saheli expectantly.

No. She wasn't going to fucking acknowledge this. 

"You want me to be like Rick?" Who even was Rick? Cold and callous to everyone but her and Beth, someone who had fucked his way around the universe, someone who had a billion friends who he would never, ever die for any of them except for Saheli, apparently. A drunk that had ignored Saheli when she said to charge the portal gun, who probably lied to her about more things than she would ever know, and orphaned his only daughter. Saheli had a feeling that her emotions had blinded her from seeing who Rick really was for a long time. "Fine."

She strode out of the room, grabbing one of the bottles that sat on Rick's desk as she did and taking a deep swig. "You," she pointed at a random, humanoid rebel, who quivered anxiously under her gaze. "You're coming with me." With another deep sip and a sway of her hips, she turned around and led the alien into her room--not soundproofed, but as private as she possibly could be on this strange, alien planet, surrounded by people she didn't know.

The door slammed shut behind them, and Saheli began the painful process of drowning her love from the inside out.

* * *

_"Saheli," her mother said, tilting her chin up so she was forced to meet her gaze. "I know that starting a new school is difficult. I know that you are concerned for making new friends, and working hard alongside people you do not know so well, but you have to do what all animals must. You have to adapt, darling, and then you will see that this is not so bad."  
_

_Saheli frowned softly, tears pricking at her eyes as she held on tight to her backpack. "Why did we have to move, mama?" she asked, fighting the urge to lower her gaze, knowing that her mother's hand under her chin would stop that from happening. "I don't like these new things--or these people. I miss Joshua, and Emily, and Poppy, and my old school."_

_Saheli's mom hesitated. "I know you don't like it, baby. But you're only little! You still have time to get used to these new things. Sometimes we just accept change, and that's all we can do."_

* * *

Birdperson became... kind of like a rock for Saheli.

And maybe that was because he was Rick's best friend (next to her) and being close to him made her forget for a small moment that Rick was gone, but it was also because... he was consistent when everything else was crazy and chaotic. He let her under his wing when she got too drunk to even consider crawling into bed with someone else, letting her talk to him about things that didn't matter--like how she felt lost and abandoned and alone and there was no chance of her ever reaching home--until she sobered up enough to know better.

Until she sobered up enough to remember that she forced her way into this life that she didn't deserve, and killed Rick as a result. Until she sobered up enough to remember that being the unofficial-official leader of the rebels had put them in more danger than when Rick had been leading them.

Rick... didn't talk about his feelings. Saheli remembered moments when he did, but more when he didn't, and even more than that when he completely shut down at just the thought of it.

Birdperson was probably the best person that she could be close with. He was a good fighter, calm and collected, and he was used to Rick falling apart at the seams that Saheli taking over didn't faze him in the slightest. Or it didn't seem to at least; it was hard to get a read on him sometimes, even though she had known him for longer than anyone else on Blood Ridge.

Squanchy had been apart of that list too, but without Rick there to help manufacture his growth-serum... well, there were reasons for drinking beyond Rick.

Saheli didn't think about it.

Or, at least, she tried not to. Unsurprisingly, there were some things that couldn't really be helped.

* * *

_"I need a plan, a new one--" Saheli paced as Birdperson watched her quietly, sucking down watered down alcohol: their reserves were running dry, and they had finished the last of their fuel off a day ago. Rick would have been able to invent something new, but Saheli... was forced to the ground, stuck on her feet. "We're losing too many people, something needs to give."_

_Saheli wasn't a fighter. She wasn't built that way, not like the others who were warrior species, used to fighting for survival. Saheli was used to just being complacent, not picking fights with strangers, not being overly political. She let Rick get away with giving Beth knives for God's sake, and now she was getting used to the feeling of having one pressing against her thigh, a gun attached to her waist at all times._

_Birdperson blinked owlishly._

_He was sitting on her bed that was still rumpled from the night before, and Saheli grabbed Rick's portal gun from beside him. The plastic that had served its purpose and protected the metal inside had been melted away by the blast, and the input for dimensions had been rolled permanently to 000. It was cracked and broken, just like Rick-_

_"You must understand your capabilities as a leader," he finally said, and Saheli could have ripped her hair out. She wasn't capable--that was the whole point! She was never meant to be their leader, not in the same way that Rick was born to fill the role. "You are too busy destroying your life to be like our fallen friend but you are not meant to be him in the way it seems you are trying."_

_Saheli scoffed._

* * *

At first, Saheli marked the days off. As the blood red sun rose, she found herself already awake from the night before, a new man in her bed and a bottle or five at her feet. It was a motivator... until she realised that she wasn't going anywhere. She was stuck on this planet, had been stranded there for longer than she had ever wanted to be. She had Rick's warped portal gun tucked away under her pillow as a reminder, and his flask found itself in her pocket like it belonged there.

She knew some things. Rick and her fought for nearly three years together. He took her home when she got lonely, letting her disappear for a few hours every night to visit her mom's grave, and catch up with Beth for a little while. Time worked differently on Blood Ridge, and she was aware of that... even if she didn't fully understand what about it was different.

Without Rick, she was discovering that she knew less and less than she had previously assumed.

Some people left their jewellery, their businesses behind... Rick left his alcoholism and war for her to continue in his stead.

She couldn't even get a break in her sleep.

"Saheli?" A voice broke through the confines of Saheli's dream, of orange flowers and a pink sky, making her grumble half-heatedly into her pillow. "Saheli, you need to wake up; there's a Gromflomite here, and he says that he knew Sanchez--but you're the only one who would really know!"

She had been on fucking Blood Ridge for a long time. Too long. Long enough that crying herself to sleep was slowly being replaced with staring blankly at a wall until she passed out, or got actively knocked out while on the frontline. And it wasn't that she cared, okay? It wasn't like she had gotten to know every member of every species that were there with her revolting, and it wasn't like she had to drink more than usual every time one of her (not, she kept forgetting) friends died.

That was old Saheli. That wasn't her anymore.

"Saheli!"

She finally let herself poke her head up, blinking blearily at the blurry person that was interrupting her after she had just spent three days up on land without any kind of rest to speak of. She was exhausted, and she couldn't even remember what she had been woken up for in the first place. "Wazzit?"

The person--Mickel, she belatedly realised--shifted nervously on his feet; probably because of the glare she could feel warping her features. "We--we found a Gromflomite in the base, ma'am, and he said that Sanchez keyed him in because they were buddies. He's... wondering where Sanchez is, but we haven't told him anything! I swear it."

...Maybe it was stupid to keep up the charade of Rick being alive to the Galactic Federation, and unrealistic, and probably because of some unresolved issues she was too drunk to actually address. But it kept the bugs scared and mostly out of the way while Saheli stressed over the blueprints and inventions--along with disassembled parts--that Rick left behind to use on the field. Some of them were pretty straightforward--point and shoot, being a key example--but some were slightly more complicated.

Wait...

"You mean here as in he's here in the actual base? He's keyed in-keyed in? In the flesh?"

Mickel nodded frantically and Saheli rolled out of bed, dragging her worn blanket with her as she crashed to the hard, cold floor. Mickel flushed at the sight of her bare torso but didn't make a move to leave until she shooed him away, his eyes fixed firmly to his toes respectfully. She pretended not to notice how he sneaked a peek when she turned her scarred back to him, pale stripes and bursts of raised skin creating a vision almost akin to a Jackson Pollock painting, vivid against her darker skin. Not too long ago it would have been mostly obscured by her long curly hair... unfortunately drunk hair-cuts didn't really account for that kind of sensible thinking.

Her hair was just as curly as ever, fluffed and healthy (with none of the heat damage or alien gunk in it that came with war), but it sprung up around her ears in a way that would have been cool if she didn't kind of miss the nostalgia that came with combing her fingers through hair that came down to her waist. She normally braided one side of it down, and then gave up and left it: that trend didn't stop as she shrugged a torn _Flesh Eaters_ band tee on, her fingers twisting in her hair as she hopped into her heavy boots. Eventually she just left it in favour of grabbing a few knives that hooked dangerously, and a few guns that were more of props for interrogation than actual convenient weapons.

When Mickel had the door open, she hadn't noticed the murmurs of dislike and distrust that hung heavy in the air, but now that she was aware of it she could smell the unease that lingered in the hallway, could all but taste it like ash on her tongue.

_"--don't wait around, just kill the damn bug and figure out how he got in later!"_

_"And what do you think the boss will say if she found out you were shooting first and asking the important questions later, hm?"_

Saheli didn't wait around to hear the response, pushing through the door with a certain amount of borrowed aggression and confidence that didn't suit her as well as it should for how long she had been using it for. People stopped talking as she stooped to stare at the Gromflomite who was leaning against the couch in a relaxed manner, which made her relax on instinct as much as it made her bristle uncomfortably.

He looked worse for the wear, but there was something smug and calm in his energy that made Saheli believe, truly, for just a minute, that he really did belong there with them. Of course that feeling lasted for a split-second before being shrugged off in a way that she still hadn't mastered yet, and she glared at the alien. 

"What are you doing here?" One thing she hadn't grown out of was her habit of asking questions. She still liked to know things, still liked to understand things, and it was what stopped her from becoming just... complacent. "Who are you? Why shouldn't I just kill you right here, right now?"

Saheli heard a few _oohs_ from her makeshift audience, and tried not to think about how thin this group was compared to the people that had witnessed Rick's death. No, she didn't try not to think about it--it got pushed out of her mind and off of a cliff, and there was nothing more to be said about it. Her fingers twitched as the urge for a drink scratched at her innards like a bloodthirsty hound.

"Hey, man!" The Gromflomite buzzed happily, giving her a slightly butchered salute. "I'm Krombopulos Michael, I'm an assassin and I buy guns from Rick. Speaking of, have you seen him? See, my trigger finger does this thing when I'm not killing, so I'd really like to get back to that--it's my profession and my hobby! I've been trying to get in touch with Rick for a while but it doesn't seem like he's here either, so I'll just go on, doing what I do best--murder--until I find him." With that, he straightened up and stretched his arms out, like he was genuinely not concerned for his life at all. 

Saheli just replied faintly. "He's--he's dead," much to her own surprise. That didn't matter, though, because she had heard that name before.

_"You don't--you don't like it when I sell my weapons," Rick said, not needing to ask the question: Saheli was open and honest with her thoughts on the matter. "I'm selling a gun--a really nice gun--to a good client. Krombopulos Michael. Always pays in full, up-front, never asks too many questions, never double-crosses me because he's smart. You're here because of where we're going after."_

Rick had a funny habit of cropping up wherever she poked her nose, didn't he?

"Oh," Michael looked genuinely sad and frustrated, his pincers quivering as he paused in his adjustments of his red goggles. "I... didn't realise. I probably should have, huh? But Rick-"

Seemed larger than life. Seemed unkillable. Immortal. Saheli knew the feeling.

"I don't know if Rick ever mentioned me," Saheli said carefully. "But my name--I'm Saheli, well, _Pluto_ and-"

The crowd around them started grumbling, and Saheli knew that it was mostly because _they_ knew they were going to miss out on witnessing Michael get beaten within an inch of his life for information, and would rather leave than stick around for context. She could hardly care, though, when her old nickname got stuck in her throat, threatening to choke her.

"Ohhhh," Michael nodded, still looking somber despite his personality before the news--as far as Saheli had seen, he was quite chipper normally--and Saheli shifted uncomfortably on her feet. Everyone else on Blood Ridge had already moved on, and seeing someone mourn Rick was... making her feel things she wasn't sure she was comfortable with. "Yeah, he mentioned a Pluto... more than once. Now that I think about it, he probably pointed you out too, you know? Seemed pretty proud if you ask me, which you're not but I'm telling you anyway. Yeah I've seen you before; facial perception comes with the biz--of killing, I mean."

 _Don't do it, Saheli,_ her subconscious warned her, and Saheli screwed her mouth up.

She wanted to hate him, she really did. He was one of a thousand threads tying her to Rick, making her feel for him, think about him, even when she was boozed out of her mind, and he was a Gromflomite as well, apart of the species she had all but given up her life to destroy; but at the same time... "I don't suppose you'd want to help us kill more people," Saheli said, only slightly relieved when the sadness on Michael's face was wiped away and replaced with a mixture of joy and determination.

"I've been assassinating people off of the battlefield... that's mostly what I'm good at," he pursed... what might have been lips? Before continuing. "Man, what the hell: just point me and I'll pull the trigger," Michael said after a beat, extending his long arm so Saheli could grab onto his three-fingered hand, shaking it firmly.

_What was she doing?_

She was grabbing onto a reminder of her old life with both hands, holding on as tight as she could manage because... why? His confidence had infected her? Rick trusted him ages and ages ago? She needed new blood to remind her that there was more to life than war and death and the metaphorical bear trap that Blood Ridge had become, holding her captive with jagged teeth?

"We're staging a battle," Saheli said, beckoning him over to the clear board with hastily scribbled instructions and tactics. "Tomorrow. We do it roughly every three-to-five months, randomly: they have a decent amount of fuel in their base that we could use to get out own vehicles up off of the ground, but it's too heavily guarded for us to get close. None of us know enough about their security, but maybe..."

Michael warbled, the flaps over his mouth moving excitedly. "Lucky for you, I have a large number of kills under my belt from infiltrating Federation strongholds."

Hope was dumb and useless... but it flapped its wings in Saheli's stomach anyway.

* * *

_"Have you ever been in love?" Rick asked, holding Saheli in his arms after she crept into his room, the cold metal of the bunker leeching through her thick socks until she clambered onto his bed (accidentally kneeing him awake in the process)._

_Saheli pondered the question. She loved, definitely; she liked opening her heart to people, and she kept them close when she did. She had a feeling that being in love was different to loving, though: when someone loved, they opened their hearts. Being in love probably consumed people's hearts, molding them and melding them to match their partner's._

_It was an easy question with a difficult answer._

_"I think so," was what she settled on, refusing to tilt her head back and make eye-contact with him. "You have, right? You and Diane, before... before everything?"_

_She felt Rick shrug, and decided not to dwell on the heavy sigh that rustled her hair. "I don't know anymore," Rick said, like he had been thinking about it for a while. "I used to think that being in love was just... complacency. Disappointment. Guilt. But now... I'm not so sure. I loved her--she's Beth's mom, how could I not?--but I don't think that I was in love with her. Not like..."_

_He trailed off, and Saheli understood. Rick was cold and aloof and alone, and as much as he liked to pretend that he was more than human... it was basic instinct to want to connect. To fall in love. To gather friends and family if you weren't born into them._

_"Not like..." Saheli encouraged, and Rick--squirming and unhappy--took the bait knowingly.  
_

_"It's not like how I am with you," he said, and Saheli's heart soared._

* * *

Klorkxan was one of the idiots that Saheli had--shamefully--prayed for the death of. He hadn't changed; from when he was disrespecting Rick before his body was even cooled, he was still the most disgusting, selfish, sexist jerks that she had ever met in her entire life, which was _really_ saying something. She didn't hate many people, but she _hated_ him and held him in such contempt that it astounded even her.

And it wasn't like it was a secret either; she tore him to shreds whenever he spoke up, and not without reason. He was rude, entitled, and he had nearly single-handedly lead to multiple deaths within their faction. Through butchering information because _'the bitch was probably wrong anyway',_ and forcing people to cover him in places he had no business being in, he was someone who had taken away people that Saheli might have tried connecting with before she could gather her confidence, and put faith in their group.

"No," Klorkxan snarled, his mouth curling up like he was struggling not to bash Saheli's head against the wall. "He's a fucking Grommie--a bloody bug--and I'm not working with him--I'll push him into the gunfire myself if you make me."

And that was why he was worried. Not because this was a new addition to their plans, not because they had to rework things last minute, and not even because Saheli was clearly slightly high; because Michael was a Gromflomite. "You're a fucking racist," Saheli said, stepping forward in a way that could only be considered aggressive. "And this is not about you. This is about everything that everyone _except_ for you has worked for, so sit down and listen while I explain this to you, okay?"

If Rick were alive, there would have been one Battle of Blood Ridge. His death and their retreat had turned that into battles, and that turned into a makeshift war with soldiers that were being killed en masse on both sides.

The difference between them was that, while the Gromflomites were easily replaced by trained soldiers, Saheli didn't have their resources and no-one wanted to fight in a battle that was doomed from the start, especially since there was next to no ingenuity on their side except for what Rick had left behind for them to use. 

Klorkxan growled, his hand tightening around the hilt of his third axe that month; he had an unfortunate tendency of throwing them immediately and then losing them to the collapsed chest of an enemy soldier, which meant that Saheli had to, quite often, flip on Rick's tools and attempt to fashion him a new one out of spare parts and scrap metal. Needless to say, her first few attempts were not very good, considering there was a very real life-or-death aspect to them failing.

She dared him to do it with her eyes, hazel flashing with steel. If he swung at her, her people would swing right back at him or she'd use this as an excuse to finally put him out of the field. She wouldn't _kill_ him, but the only reason he was even allowed to fight at all was because he was healthy. He was strong, morally grey, and would be a decent member of the rebellion if he knew how to listen.

"Klaarpn j'ki," Saheli knew--from Klorkxan's half-brother--that that translated into _'fucking woman'_ , but she ignored him. He wasn't worth her energy when she had a heist to pull off. To his credit, Michael didn't seem particularly fazed by the harsh words directed his way, hands shoved in his pockets as he sung to himself cheerfully under his breath. Saheli had heard the word 'killing' at least four times already, so she was content to let him be.

Birdperson watched him with keen eyes, which tended to be slightly disturbing; his eyes were large and tinted with yellow and made him look both judgemental and non-judgemental at the same time. It was a gift that made even Saheli quake in her shoes at times.

"We need to have an attack near the ravine," Saheli said, pointing it out on the crudely drawn map pinned to the board. "And then another at their decoy base; that's where they think our target is, but me, BP, and KM will go and start making our way over to where we know their _actual_ base is located. The two groups will make an offensive display to draw their attention and then retreat to defensive until you can get away. We aren't looking to kill today, just distract and deflect."

There were some bloodthirsty people she knew there, who wouldn't be happy with that.

Birdperson looked approving at least, and Michael was pouting as best he could, pausing in his singing. "Oh," he said, fiddling with a pretty looking purple gun. "So... no murder?"

...Saheli was never going to get off of this planet, was she?

* * *

_"Why do you even care what the Federation does?" Saheli asked not unkindly. "It's not like it would effect you--you'd be able to do anything you wanted, like you do now. Laws and restrictions don't stop you now, so why would you care about new laws and restrictions?"_

_Rick chuckled._

_"First of all," he said," you have way too much faith in me. The GF has cronies everywhere, and some of the fuckers are actually good at their jobs--it's a shitty job but they do it. If they continue with their--their fucking propaganda, that effects me and my businesses too." He paused in his indulgence for a moment, before he continued slightly more hoarsely than before. "And it isn't just about business. Pluto, people have tried to control me all my life. It never ends well, and those people all had ulterior motives that were even worse than their public image."_

_"You think they have more planned than what they're saying?" What they were saying, of course, being how much better Federation-controlled planets were, and how much financial prosperity they would bring; along with laws, rules and punishment. Saheli had thought they were fighting against dictators, pushing back against something oppressive and oblivious to their own faults, but the idea that they might have even more planned than placing planets under their jurisdiction without consent... she wondered what it might be._

_Rick took a sip from his flask. "They always do," he said. "But I'll stop them."_

_And Saheli understood. As much as Rick tried to pretend he was unaffected, he loved the universe; he might have even believed that he didn't care, but Saheli had seen it. She had seen how his face lit up under the constellations they flew by, had seen how he looked truly and irrevocably at home._

_"We'll stop them," she corrected him, leaning over to snag his flask from his hand, trying and failing to look unaffected by the way Rick smiled before he leaned forward to press a kiss to her lips._

* * *

_"--ooh murder, I just love killing, just love that beautiful murduhrrrr!--"_

"You should stop singing," Birdperson turned to face Krombopulos Michael, his pale yellow eyes narrowed slightly. "We are attempting to break into a highly secure facility, and your voice may quite possibly alert them."

Michael turned around to glare exaggeratedly at him and Saheli mentally face palmed; she wouldn't say they didn't like each other but they were very different which meant they had very different techniques when it came to not dying or becoming prisoners of war. Birdperson was controlled, strong, quiet, while Michael was somewhat relaxed in what was actually a very hostile environment.

" _Anyway,"_ Michael said, hand on his purple gun. "A lot of injured Gromflomites incubate themselves after getting injured, for healing, and since we have a reasonably delicate exoskeleton that armour can sometimes fail to protect, that takes up a lot of power. That means that there is a main power grid and a second one solely for the incubation pods."

"We've always tried to disable their power using the main grid," Saheli breathed. "We didn't even know they had a second one at all." A separate system. It made sense, now that she had it in her head.

Their power had always been important. It had always been apart of Saheli's mission, an inane idea born from one too many drinks and the kind of nostalgia that inspired poor decisions. It was a loose thread that kept unravelling, spurred on by consistent failure until the only logical conclusion was that--if she succeeded--this nightmare would be over. And she was close enough that the possibility frightened her. 

Who was she, without Bloodridge? She didn't think she knew anymore.

She was startled from her thoughts by Michael's execution of an impressive handspring, and she scrambled to follow him into the shadows (Birdperson following behind her at a sedated pace) as a Gromflomite guard turned the corner, presumably coming back from an unauthorised break. "I know this is, like, a really big deal for you two," Michael said quietly, swiping two fingers over the base of a gun, creating a small, purple glow. "I remember my first government collapse. I like to remember the ones that come after that too."

Then, before Saheli had even finished raising a half-amused half-confused eyebrow, she was splattered with alien viscera.

But that wasn't even what stopped her heart. It wasn't the thick, black blood that had her shaking--well, not solely at least--it was how casually Michael strolled over to the mangled corpse, like this wasn't what Saheli's life had been revolving around for far too long. And it was how he stooped to pick up a radio, cool and sleek in the way that only space's technology could be, and how the radio crackled to life in his palm. It was the words that were spoken, distorted and garbled by distance and language, and the shock of betrayal, anger, _fear_ that shot down her spine.

Of course this was a set-up. He eyes shifted nervously as she stumbled back, just a step. Birdperson stepped forward, his wings fluffing up slightly even as his head tilted in what Saheli recognised immediately as curiosity. 

Had he let her make the uncomfortably sober decision to trust this stranger? This Gromflomite? This murdere-

Michael replied to whoever had spoken in the same gravelly language, and Saheli braced herself for pain... but none came. The only thing that hurt her was the brutal invasion of the past as it trampled over her boundaries, squashing the barriers she had put up like they weren't anything at all.

* * *

_"Good job, Bethy," Saheli said, smiling brightly at her in encouragement. "Give it another go for me, okay? Then we can read a book." Beth muttered something under her breath about wanting to cut her teddy open, but rolled her eyes and_ _acquiesced._

_"Uno," she started hesitantly, the accent too thick and forced to be natural (though Saheli didn't dare say anything that would knock down Beth's confidence--she hated not being right on the first try. "Due. Tre, quattro, cinque, sei...sei...sei..."_

_"Sette," Saheli offered it up for her and Beth waved her hand in thanks, bold and pushing limits like only children could._

_"Grazie," Beth said, before groaning loudly. "Can I tell you what I learned today? Please? It's much better than--than stupid numbers, pinky swear!" At Saheli's bemused nod, she cleared her throat exaggeratedly, and squinted her eyes in concentration. Saheli sat up a little straighter, playful curiosity taking hold. "Mio babbo... mangia pizza per colazione!"_

_Saheli laughed delightedly, and Beth preened._

_"Sono innamorato," Saheli said quietly, knowing Bethy wouldn't understand but wanting to say it anyway. "Di tuo babbo."_

_"What about daddy?" Beth screwed her nose up in thought, and Saheli chuckled softly, brushing her--because if she could consider Beth anything, it would be her child; not her daughter, but her child--kid's hair away from her face._

_"Don't you worry about that, darling."_

* * *

Sneaking in was easier than she had imagined.

And, well, getting in had already blown her expectations out of the water but...

_Wow._

She had never expected things to appear so _fragile_ either, though Michael was clearly used to it and Birdperson didn't have much of any emotion to show on a normal day. But there it all was: rows and rows of pods, the occasional doctor-looking-official that they avoided by ducking into corners and shadowed alcoves, effectively sneaking their way further into the rotten heart of the Federation base.

You know what they say: think it won't, and it will, and Saheli locked eyes with a Gromflomite.

"So-" Saheli started.

"Shhh!" Michael said, drowning out Birdperson's, "Saheli, I do believe it unwise to-"

"But-"

Michael waved her away, and Birdperson placed a hand on her shoulder, in what was probably meant to be a comforting move that only made her frozen heart shudder slightly. She didn't know what happened, but seeing the soldier made her heart and knees quake like she was a little girl again, even as an apathetic realisation hit her: she really was going to die here. And it wasn't accompanied by the usual fear that plagued her, but... a strange relief.

She imagined that was how Rick must have felt.

Saheli... hadn't let herself think about him much as of late, and he had become as treacherous a topic as murder.

While her mind moved a million miles per hour, time had slowed to a snail's crawl, and she saw the minuscule emotions flicker across the face of an enemy whom she didn't even know the name of. She saw surprise, fear, loathing, and hesitance that was followed by guilt's shadow when he hit a large, red button on the side of the wall. With the blaring of sirens, her mind sped up, and she remembered that she wasn't just living to die a martyr's death: she was living to protect her friends and allies. For Rick's sacrifice, for her own sacrifice.

And she didn't let herself hesitate before lunging into the offensive for what she hoped would be the last time (though she knew that at least her blood was born singing a soldier's song).

* * *

The explosion was beautiful.

When Saheli clawed and dragged herself through blood and organs, her broken, soot covered fingertips grazing the trigger of her gun and shooting the core of the base--it was something she had only ever seen before in sci-fi movies. It was glorious, bathing her in a brilliant pink light that made her think of _happiness,_ and _innocence,_ and _murder in disguise._

And it blew her backwards, Birdperson barely snagging her by the bullet-proof vest as she crumpled like a dummy without a master under the force of what felt like a million suns. But it was beautiful, gorgeous (like she had thought Rick was when he let his guard down and smiled like he could be happy around her), and ash tasted like freedom on her tongue.

What came after the explosion...

Hurt.

Her body ached and she was broken in more places than she had ever known she'd had, and burning bodies smell worse than what books might have told you. Something crackled with electricity beside her where she lay, and she turned her head tiredly to watch green sparks fly from the parts of the core that had liquefied in the blast. Survivors stirred in the rubble, but all she could do was laugh.

It had been right under their noses.

Her hands trembled as she fished out the portal-gun, cracked and mangled... but not beyond repair because this was her final hurrah. This was her reward, after too long of being pushed down into the dirt by her enemies, kicked and beaten at every turn. This was a victory.

Saheli looked around, her hair matted and clinging to her sweaty face as she made out a few mostly-intact vehicles, and she breathed a sigh of relief that had blood dribbling down her lip. Everyone would be safe. They would go home to their families and loved ones and peace, and Saheli would go back to being plain and ordinary, and everything she hadn't been in so long.

Everything she hadn't ever wanted to be, she kept forgetting.

She put her hand out, cupping it to catch the liquid that sizzled when it hit her skin, her other hand trying to open the melted-shut fluid port. She finally managed to pop it open, and she let the liquid run down her fingers into it, the bright green glow making her flinch back at first before she started laughing again--this time, so hard that tears fell with the laughter from her lips.

She wouldn't leave BP and Michael behind to fend for themselves like the others. They had known Rick, really known him, and he would have wanted them to come with her. Maybe more importantly, she wanted them with her if only to remind herself that they would care about her if she wasn't a toy put on a pedestal. Her fingers traced the number engraved on the bottom of the portal-gun.

_000-1_

_(For emergencies only.)_

M-76ς could wait until she unraveled this last secret.

* * *

She could only imagine what they looked like, war-torn and tumbling from a portal tey were never meant to have the ability to create.

“Sa--Saheli?” Rick-- _a_ Rick, she had to remind herself as she took in the numerous versions of the same blue-haired man--stumbled forward, a half-empty bottle falling from his slack fingers, shattering and spilling over the concrete. Saheli took an uneasy step back when she caught sight of the tears brimming in his eyes, but otherwise held her ground. He recognised her, and the fact that all of these men were all Ricks--all some variation of the guy that had saved her life even at the cost of his own, made it easy to let her guard down. She trusted them, for better or worse. “I--oh, _God_ , I thought I’d never see your face again.”

She hadn’t thought she would see his either, and it was so hard not to see past the the clothing and hair and obvious drug addiction and see _her_ Rick.

“I--” she cleared her throat, the tears pricking her eyes extremely familiar, and entirely unwelcome. She had to be strong, she couldn’t just let herself fall back down into the rabbit hole that had opened beneath her feet when Rick died, even though she was sure her body was mostly dead already. “There was another me--in your dimension?”

She mentally smacked herself on the head for asking--she hadn’t met this version of Rick before, and there was clearly something that wasn’t quite right about their past together. There had to be another her that hadn’t made it, she guessed, judging by the way Rick was looking at her like she was a miracle--or freak--of nature, and the way he was staring at her with the same hollow expression she recognised from herself after Rick sacrificed himself for her.

"Yeah," the Rick said, his hands shaking. "Yeah--there was."

Saheli looked away. She had to. Looking at him any further would cause her to break down entirely, and she couldn't afford to do that, not now; she didn't know if she would be able to put herself back together again if she did. Letting her eyes wander, she noticed that a few Ricks--not a great deal--had a baby with them, wrapped in a little yellow blanket with tufts of brown hair poking out, and just the sight of them was enough to let her thoughts wander back to where she hadn't let them for years:

_Beth._

She would be nearly grown up by now, wouldn't she? Not even almost grown up--she would be. She'd be at least eighteen, she had to be; it was hard to find out how long she had been there for--were the wrinkles from stress or age, were the years shorter, how was she supposed to tell?--but she had been there for long enough that her memories were blurred around the edges when she tried to recall them God, that wasn't fair. 

"Having another kid at your age?" Saheli choked out a laugh. "That's risky of you, Rick."

"That's our grandson," he said slowly, finally turning away from her to look at his doppelgangers. "Morty--Beth's boy. Not a lot of us have met him yet, just the ones whose Beth died after having him. Some of them have their Summers too, but little kids don't get dragged into the shit we get ourselves in." Saheli could hear the double meaning in his words in the way he tripped over the words in a way that wouldn't have been noticeable if she didn't _know_ Rick down to his marrow.

"I chose to come with you, Rick," she said, as gently as she could. "Any version of me would have." Another thing struck her. "Wait--Bethy's too young to have a baby, isn't she? And another one--a baby girl?"

Rick nodded shakily. "We keep an eye on them when we leave, and a lot of us haven't gone back yet... my Beth is twenty-one now, but some timelines are different." Their interaction drew the attention of other Ricks, who were all watching her with varying degrees of confusion and sadness. Saheli appreciated the way Michael and BP crowded around her protectively, which was understandable. These Ricks looked older. Harsher. Potentially not the men that they had all known and cared about in their own ways. "What dimension are you from?"

Dimension. Her _d_ _imension._ Rick had mentioned it a million times, it was on the tip of her tongue...

_"There's just something about M-76ς, Pluto, that doesn't work according to the average timeline."_

"M-76ς," Saheli said. At least the Rick was looking less and less shell-shocked as the seconds ticked by, though the other Ricks around them were just starting to let themselves slip, their faces falling like they were recalling a tragic memory. Based on the fact that there weren't any other Sahelis milling around with the other Ricks, she hadn't... survived... Blood Ridge.

Saheli Rossi, the cosmic stooge: the irony was not lost on her.

"M-76ς is a funny one," the Rick nodded. Then, hesitantly, he asked. "Do you--do you want to find someone that can get you home? Back to Earth?"

He didn't exactly sound like he wanted her to leave.

Saheli dared look around once again, at the Ricks who had caught a glimpse of her and had dragged themselves over, tripping over their feet because they refused to take their eyes off of her, like they were worried she would disappear into the wind if they did. She looked up at Birdperson, and then at Michael, who gave her a cheery thumbs up as best he could considering he didn't exactly have thumbs.

This was a teeming, living society occupied by the one man she had ever given everything up for, and had gotten everything he had to offer in return. The answer was scarily obvious, and Saheli opened her mouth, the very presence of Birdperson and Michael comforting her in the way she had hoped drinks and drugs and men would.

And then she collapsed.

~~_To be continued?_ ~~

**Author's Note:**

> let me and the original creator of this lovely oc know what you think of this! don't shy away from making anything inspired by this, leaving a kudos, or dropping a comment!! if you want to submit plot ideas, art, etc, my tumblr inbox can be found HERE.


End file.
